Vacation

Silence hung like a shroud above them. The motel room, cheapened by the promise of 'nonsmoking', was chilled with the ghost of a heater and a wide 3story high corner view of Ventura. The passing vehicles from the nearby freeway were the only sounds.

The boy was not coming she thought. Her opinion of the boy had changed, warped slightly by the silent treatment so suddenly imposed; darkening the horizon like the ugly gray clouds gathering in the evening sky. This vacation, so awaited, such trials and tributes about the whole affair! ..only to sit in a chilly inpersonal motel room and be confronted in each passing moment, with every passing breath - but the boy was not coming.

She looks at the man sitting by the window overlooking a main road and a gas-station. He sits and sighs and watches. She knows this is not going to get any better. An earlier flight will only inconvenience them of sleep and a $200 ticket-change fee. Yet the thought of watching a small part of the man's soul die, here, in this city of noise and confusion and deception was not unlike watching a small animal be tortured and being unable to help. She kept thinking about the heater and how if it were warmer in here things wouldn't seem so macrabe.

The man sang a line of no-tune words that he hates this place. He hates this place.

She thinks longingly of the nearby beach and the mall, but dismisses them almost guiltily. The man has been strong until now, fueled by the thought of seeing the boy. With each passing figure, each car, the man waited maybe not even hoping any longer. In suspended animation because to lose all hope at this moment will be to believe absolutely that the boy was not coming.

She awakens in the dark to the man's sobbing. She can almost feel the thick heat, the salty tears on her own cheeks and she falls asleep listening to tear-choked sorrow.

What a horrible boy she now thinks. The boy did not come.